Chapter Three
The unopened bottle of ten-year-old Aberlour stood on Ronnie Babcock’s kitchen table, its ready-made red bow still attached. Babcock regarded it sourly as he added the day’s post to the already toppling pile beside the bottle, then tossed his coat over a chair filled to overflowing with unopened newspapers.
The scotch was a gift from his guv’nor, Superintendent Fogarty, and you could always trust the super to judge the appropriate level of gift giving to a T. Not a blended bottle of Bell’s, which might make it seem he undervalued his team, but nor could he be bothered to spend a quid or two extra on the twelve-year-old Aberlour. No point in splashing out more than was absolutely necessary, he would say. A diplomat to the bone, was Fogarty—no wonder he’d gone far in the force.
Not that Fogarty was a bad copper, as much as it sometimes galled Babcock to admit it. He was just a better politician, and that was what up- to-date policing required. Fogarty played golf regularly with the right county officials; he lived in a detached bungalow in the toniest part of suburban Crewe; his unfortunately bucktoothed wife appeared often in the pages of Cheshire Life.
The Fogartys’ life had, in fact, been Peggy Babcock’s ideal, and she’d told Ronnie often enough what a fool he was not to emulate it.
Babcock had sneered at that, and look where it had got him.
Alone in a sedate semidetached house on the Crewe Road outside Nantwich, a house he had hated from the day the estate agent had shown it to them. And Peggy, who had insisted they buy the place, had packed her bag and walked out, straight into the arms—and the flat—of the same estate agent.
He gave a convulsive shiver as the cold began to seep through the thin fabric of his suit jacket. The central- heating boiler had been wonky the past few days, but he hadn’t mustered the time or energy to have a look at it, and tonight it seemed to have gone out altogether. Now there was no chance in hell of getting the heating man to come, which meant it was going to be a long, cold Christmas.
Slipping back into his overcoat, Babcock tore the bow off the bottle of Aberlour, but stopped short of breaking the seal. The question was, did he put himself out of his misery now and suffer the hangover on Christmas morning, when he had to pay a courtesy call on his aged aunt, or did he put it off until he’d discharged his one social obligation and could sink as deep as he liked into alcohol-induced self- pity?
There were a couple of beers in the fridge, if not much else—he could make himself a sandwich and drink them while he watched Christmas Eve rubbish on the telly. Either choice was pathetic.
He’d volunteered for the holiday-call rota rather than face the evening on his own, but the citizenry of South Cheshire seemed remarkably well- behaved this Christmas Eve, more’s the pity, and he had finally given up a hope of action and left a stultifyingly quiet station.
For a moment he toyed with the idea of calling Peggy to wish her a happy Christmas, but that meant he’d probably have to carry on a civil conversation with Bert, and he doubted his Christmas spirit would stretch quite that far.
Beer and telly it was, then, and he’d better bring the duvet down
from the bedroom for a little extra warmth. He’d hate for his offi -
cers to find him frozen on his sofa when he didn’t turn up for work after the holiday. Serve Peggy right, though, the cow, he thought with a snort, if she had to make social capital out of his embarrassing demise. On the other hand, “Killed in the line of duty” would provide her with conversational fodder for years, and he didn’t intend to give her the satisfaction.
He had opened the fridge, groaning when he saw only a solitary can of Tennents and an open packet of ham that curled up at the edges, when the mobile phone clipped to his belt began to vibrate.
Even before he glanced at the number he knew it was Area Control—
no one else would be ringing him on Christmas Eve.
“Thank you, God,” he said with a sigh, and raised his eyes heav-enward in salute as he flipped open the phone.
They sat huddled in Juliet’s van, with the motor running in hopes of coaxing a little warm air from the heating vents. The windows were already fogging from their breath, and outside, the snow still drifted down, cocooning them from the outside world.
Kincaid found himself thinking of the time when he and Jules, as children, had managed to get themselves locked in their neighbor’s coal cellar for an afternoon. He’d been devouring science fi ction at the time, and as they’d sat scrunched together in the dark in what had seemed utter isolation, he’d imagined they were the last two people on earth. Fortunately, the neighbor had come home and heard their shouts, so they’d got off with no more than a bollocking and a missed meal, but he’d never forgotten the exhilarating terror of those long hours.
Beside him, Juliet took off one glove and held her bare hand in front of the vent, then grimaced and pulled it on again. “It’s bloody freezing,” she said. “Do you think the police will be long?”
Remembering how she had always refused comfort, he didn’t s
give her a reassuring answer. “Quite likely. They’ll be short-staffed tonight, and the bad weather won’t help.” After notifying the local police, he’d rung Gemma and his parents to explain the situation, but when he’d offered his phone to Juliet and asked if she needed to call Caspar, she’d said no.
Kincaid had never been particularly fond of his brother- in- law—
he found the man’s supercilious attitude exasperating—but he was distressed to hear the evident unhappiness in his sister’s voice. He knew better than to pry, however—unless he did it very tactfully.
“How’s your new business going?” he asked.
From the look on Juliet’s face, it had been the wrong question.
“This was my first big commission. We were already behind schedule because of the weather, and now with this—” She gave a despairing little shrug. “What makes it worse is that the client is a friend of Piers—” A few more strands fluttered loose from her ponytail as she fell silent, shaking her head. “Oh, God, listen to me. I’m a selfi sh cow to even think about my problems, when that poor child— What do you think happened to it, Duncan? And the pink suit—was it a little girl?”
“We can’t know that yet,” he answered gently. “But try not to think about it. Whatever happened was a long time ago—”
“Not that long,” she broke in, surprising him. “That blanket—
the children had one in the same fabric when they were small. It must have been Lally’s, I think, because it was pink, but we used it for Sam as well.”
“Do you remember where it came from?” he asked, unable to damp down the quickening of his pulse as his investigative instincts kicked in. This was not his case, he reminded himself—it had nothing to do with him.
“The supermarket, maybe. Or one of the chain baby shops. It was nothing special.”
He pictured the child only a few yards distant, its flesh wasting away from its small bones, and wondered at the care with which it had been wrapped in the cheap blanket. But he had seen parents
batter their children to death, then cover them tenderly, so he knew it meant nothing. Nor did he want to think about those things, not here, not now.
“How do you do it?” Jules said softly, as if she’d read his mind.
“How do you deal with things like this every day, and still put your children to bed at night without panicking? They’re so fragile, so vulnerable. You think it’s the most frightening when they’re babies, but then they get old enough to be out of your sight, out of your care, and you know that anything can happen . . .”